


Our own sharp griefs

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Teacher-Student Relationship, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6575320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orbiting their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our own sharp griefs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Sweat drips into Rey's eyes, but she doesn't move to wipe it away.

Focus. So deep that it moves to a place beyond just concentration. Luke Skywalker once trained in this room. The first time he touched a lightsaber, felt something he could identify as the Force. His old, brief, master somehow still permeates this space. He doesn't have to tell her this. She is everywhere, and he is everywhere. 

There -- the brush of a finger over Rey's eyelids -- and when she opens her eyes, no one. 

"I don't need your help," she says, thinks, feels. The stack of rocks shivers. 

Luke's hand, drops onto her shoulder. She looks. It is his real hand, corporeal, not the touch of the Force. "You are no longer alone, Rey." Luke's voice comes slow, each word carefully selected from the sea in his mind. "Self-reliance is a skill you can claim as expertise, but that expertise isn't everything you need." He _pushes_ , harder than he means to. "Let me in, let me help."

"I don't nee--," Rey starts to insist, but reins herself, reaches out instead. He is everywhere. Against her, _inside_ of her. The room throbs with them. "You're no longer alone, either, you know." She _nudges_ him, even while setting another stone on the column. "You've got me, and Chewie, and R2." Tendrils of feeling seep from him, fill the room. Rey breathes him in. Even the great Jedi Master cannot hide everything. He releases her, stepping back into the shadows. "General Organa, too, if we return to D'Qar," Rey adds, bristling but gentle, because she can.

*

Chewie respects Luke far too much to pilot the ship against his orders. He's told Rey as much, shrugging, snarling the words in a way that communicates affection. So they waste time in the Outer Rim, making loose circles around D'Qar, orbiting their future. 

"You're afraid," Rey announces, without preamble, at the doorway to Luke's small quarters. He doesn't need much, prefers to sleep and meditate on the hard floor. He misses the moss, the wind, the rock, the sea. Rey misses sand. He dreams of pressing his face against the sweating necks of new friends. Rey dreams of the sun, and Finn.

"Fear is of the Dark Side." He doesn't open his eyes or turn to face her, but she can feel him _watching_ just the same. 

Rey shakes her head, groans. "Worried then, concerned." She pauses, exhales, steps through the doorway. "You abandoned them," she says, and should, but doesn't feel sorry when the wave of guilt -- not guilt, but sadness; not sadness, but knowing -- washes over them. "The General needs you, and you…, you _hid_."

He has no rebuttal. The argument has already happened a hundred times in his own mind, alone on that island. He doesn't answer. The answer comes without words.

She should hate him, for everything he stands for.

Instead, she reaches out a hand, empty and open. "You aren't alone."

She can the waves crashing in his sea of words, the ocean of syllables he cannot speak.

*

He takes her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a poem by Charlotte Bronte.


End file.
